Sony seeing class-action lawsuit over PSN outage

Two months after the PSN was hacked and personal data on 101 million customer was compromised, Sony is facing a class-action lawsuit which accuses the company of negligence and lax security.

The suit cites many "confidential" witnesses who claim that Sony's security was far from adequate and very open to attack.

Those attacks on PSN servers caused Sony to take down the service for 24 days, a time when gamers could not play online or access the PS Store.

The "smoking gun" of the lawsuit is the claim that Sony was actually firing people in their security division, prior to the attack (via Ars):

Just two weeks before the April breach, Sony laid off a substantial percentage of its Sony Online Entertainment workforce, including a number of employees in the Network Operations Center, which, according to Confidential Witness 2, is the group that is responsible for preparing for and responding to security breaches, and who ostensibly has the skills to bring the Network's security technology up-to-date.

As compensation, Sony offered 2 free games to all PS3 and PSP owners, as well as a free month of PlayStation Plus and 1 year of free identity theft protection but the suit says that isn't enough. The plaintiffs want "appropriate" restitution for class members, free credit-monitoring services, and "exemplary damages" if Sony is found guilty of negligent behavior.